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Canon Presents Ixus 125 HS and Ixus 500 HS Compacts

Morgane Alzieu / Franck Mée
Translator: Catherine Barraclough
January 9, 2012 7:52 PM
After announcing the G1-X compact with large-format sensor earlier today, Canon thn presented a couple of stylish new point-and-shoots—the fairly classic Ixus 125 HS and the more original Ixus 500 HS.

Canon has brought some interesting functions to these compacts, including a new and improved facial recognition tool (Face ID) that can recognise up to 12 pre-saved people. Pus, Face ID can apparently automatically tell the difference between a baby (the camera turns the flash and camera noises off), a child and a teenager. How did we ever manage without it?

An enhanced digital zoom is on hand to boost the zoom factor, however, we've already seen this kind of function in other brands' compacts and it's failed to convince us so far.

Canon Ixus 125 HS
Canon Ixus 125 HS




The Ixus 125 HS slots into Canon's compact range between the Ixus 115 HS and the Ixus 220 HS, with which it shares the same 24-120 mm lens. The Ixus 125 HS has a 16-Megapixel BSI CMOS sensor and films Full HD video, but with just one mic on the camera body, chances are you'll only get mono sound.

The camera has a very similar body to the recent Ixus 230 HS, with a 3-inch 460,000 dot-screen and a slightly bulkier design than the ultra-compact Ixus 115 and 220. Note that battery life is only announced at 180 photos, which really isn't much at all!

We can't really comment on this compact until we've tested it for ourselves but, for the time being, we still think that the Ixus 220 HS could be a better choice.

Canon 500 hs
Canon Ixus 500 HS




The Ixus 500 HS, on the other hand, is an all-new snapper with a slim, stylish body and a high-end set of tech specs.

Canon's Ixus 500 HS uses a brand new 1/3-inch 10-Megapixel BSI CMOS sensor. In spite of its smaller-than-average size, this sensor's lower resolution of 10 Megapixels means that the pixel density barely changes. We can therefore expect to see ISO test results comparable to those of the 16-Megapixel sensor used in the Ixus 125 HS. On top of that, the Ixus 500 HS has a 12x zoom lens (28-336 mm f/3.4-5.6), which is pretty impressive given this camera's super-small size— it measures 54 x 87 x 19 mm compared with 62 x 99 x 23 mm for the already impressively small Ixus 1100 HS!

This compact design does have one negative consequence for the Ixus 500 HS, though, as it comes loaded with the same small-format battery as the 1100 HS, which can only snap 190 photos (that's still a bit better than the ridiculous Ixus 230 battery, and at least the Ixus 500 has a good excuse!). SD cards have also been ditched in favour of smaller micro-SD memory cards, which give slightly lower performances for an equivalent price.

The Ixus 500 HS is likely to cost less than the Ixus 1100 HS even though it has a lens with the same focal range and is likely to give similar performances. If the lens can hold its own, this could shape up to be a very nice pocket snapper!

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Canon Presents Ixus 125 HS and Ixus 500 HS Compacts

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